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Image description: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) “Robbie the Robot” playing a game without human direction. See more examples of how DARPA’s Autonomous Robotic Manipulation (ARM) program is developing software to perform human-level tasks quickly and with minimal direction in this video on YouTube.

Image description: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) “Robbie the Robot” playing a game without human direction. See more examples of how DARPA’s Autonomous Robotic Manipulation (ARM) program is developing software to perform human-level tasks quickly and with minimal direction in this video on YouTube.

Image description: Scientist Dmitry Polyansky examines a vial containing a specialized catalyst designed to help convert solar energy into fuel. Producing clean-burning hydrogen fuel from just sunlight and water requires custom-built catalysts for water oxidation — the part of the water-splitting process that generates oxygen atoms. A tiny amount of the solid catalyst, developed in collaboration with the University of Houston, dissolves and turns the water that lovely shade of blue.
Photo from Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Image description: Scientist Dmitry Polyansky examines a vial containing a specialized catalyst designed to help convert solar energy into fuel. Producing clean-burning hydrogen fuel from just sunlight and water requires custom-built catalysts for water oxidation — the part of the water-splitting process that generates oxygen atoms. A tiny amount of the solid catalyst, developed in collaboration with the University of Houston, dissolves and turns the water that lovely shade of blue.

Photo from Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Image description: Do you know there are some places so cold on Earth where water is frozen solid? This includes frozen parts of the ocean, such as waters surrounding Antarctica and the Arctic composing part of the cryosphere. The cryosphere is the part of the Earth’s surface that is frozen for some part of the year. Learn more about the cryosphere.
Photo from the National Oceanic and Atmosphereic Administration’s Satellite and Information Service

Image description: Do you know there are some places so cold on Earth where water is frozen solid? This includes frozen parts of the ocean, such as waters surrounding Antarctica and the Arctic composing part of the cryosphere. The cryosphere is the part of the Earth’s surface that is frozen for some part of the year. Learn more about the cryosphere.

Photo from the National Oceanic and Atmosphereic Administration’s Satellite and Information Service

Comet PanSTARRS Streaks Across the Sky

Video Description

In March 2013, the Comet PanSTARRS became visible to the naked eye in the night sky in the Northern Hemisphere. In space, NASA’s STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) captured an even better view.

This movie, captured by the STEREO-B spacecraft, shows the comet and its fluttering tail as it moves through space. The stationary planet on the right is Earth, and the moving planet on the left is Mercury.

Video from NASA

Three Years of Images of the Sun

Video Description

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory has had virtually unbroken coverage of the sun’s rise toward solar maximum, the peak of solar activity in its regular 11-year cycle. This video shows those three years of the sun at a pace of two images per day.

These noteworthy events appear at the following times in the video:

  • 00:30;24 Partial eclipse by the moon
  • 00:31;16 Roll maneuver
  • 01:11;02 August 9, 2011 X6.9 Flare, currently the largest of this solar cycle
  • 01:28;07 Comet Lovejoy, December 15, 2011
  • 01:42;29 Roll Maneuver
  • 01:51;07 Transit of Venus, June 5, 2012
  • 02:28;13 Partial eclipse by the moon

Video from NASA.